BIODIESEL INFORMATION / chapter 1

Chapter 1: Getting Biodiesel

– BIODIESEL INFORMATION / Introduction

First solution

This one has often been seen on TV and on the web: you can buy some kitchen oil and feed your car with it. It works perfectly, there’s less pollution, and it costs you around 0,80 euro a liter in some low cost shops. But there are 2 problems:

- Let’s imagine you choose to drive using 50% of vegetal oil and the rest of diesel. Each time you want to fill up your car, you have to buy 20 bottles of oil, and fill it manually.

- With this system, you create a lot of plastic wastes with the bottles. These can only be burned and will also affect air quality.

This solution is only useful for demonstrations or to prove the fact to some dubious people. You can fill the car with the bottle from the next supermarket and astonish everybody on the parking. If people do this in mass, that’s maybe good to buy some shares from comestible oil manufacturies ;-D

Second solution

Nearly like the first one, exept that you can buy some big 50l containers of oil to have less wastes. But generally then oil is more expensive, around 1,50 euro. In case of shortage, it may be useful.

Third solution

If you have the chance to live comfortably, please use this solution and let the 4th solution for those who are short on money as this source is limited in quantity.

Instead of making the car’s fill up in mineral oil companies, do it at the farm! That’s also a good occasion to get some fresh food. It may make people from big cities smile, but in our countryside when we fill the car up we also buy some good cheese and fresh eggs from responsible agriculture. With the economies you realise by switching to vegetal carburant, that’s easy to afford healthy food directly from the source. But if you prefer chemical cheese rolled into plastics from battery animals fed with antibiotics, the choice is yours... but that’s an other file.

To get the oil, there are 2 solutions. The first, very cheap, is to buy non filtered oil - we will see how to do it later. The second is to buy ready to use oil. If you look on the web, you’ll easily find some farmer’s or association’s adresses. Concerning France, there are some in each region, all the country is covered. Driving with biodiesel, that’s also managing approvisionment yourself. Depending on the different problems, there are different solutions. But a good idea first is to get equipment: a few 20l jericans are a good investment.

As always, that’s better if you regroup. Try to find a tenth of interested people and make a collective command to the farmer. At this time, there are some associations that exist who owe a mobile press, who deplace themselves and press your oil in the required quantity. Then, you can store it and use it for some months! Using this solution, prices will be the lowest - depending on the importance of the command, around 0,35 to 0,45 euro a liter. However, you still have to filter it yourself. But if you have some piece of land, buying a tank might be a good idea. There also exist some farmers who will arrange with you to directly sell you the colza or sunflower seeds, then that’s your responsibility to press it and sell the wastes (which can be eaten by farm animals). That’s of course generally the cheapest, and that’s feasible for a collective. Realising our energetic independance toward the capitalist union asks for a few self involvement, but in front of this political and economical challenge, that’s a good idea to use a few hours a year for it. Manage this yourself, and you’ll see things be changing to the good within years.

Fourth solution

This solution consists in using used oil. It’s as good as new oil, there’s even more oxygen in the used one so combustion is more complete. You’ll also need jericans and a funnel to fill it.

There are different solutions to get this used oil, a known one is to check around th kebabs and chinese restaurants. These will be very happy to give it to you, as they have to move themselves and pay to throw it away. You can also try with town organisations or dumpsters. In front of a hesitating refusal, then a bottle of wine can arrange many things, as well as any other kind of exchange or service. Of course, in case of necessity and last possibility, you can still cross the lines and take what you need, in blue plastic barrels. After this, you only have to filter it to be able to fill it in the car or heating system.

Not only this solution allows you to drive nearly for free, there is a double environmental advantage. First, you reject 70% less pollution using biodiesel than traditional diesel, that’s never told enough. The second is that the recycling industry is very inefficient and a very small percentage of wastes really find a second life. Most of time this kind of oil is simply burnt in an incinerator. That’s better if it can help people who need it, so that it’s not burnt uselessly.

Please note that with the used oil that you get from kebabs you’ll loose 30% of the oil while prefiltering, as those restaurants mix it with palm oil, which get solid once it’s heated at high temperature and useless as carburant. On the quality and quantity aspects, chinese restaurants are goldmines, as they fry a lot of food and exclusively use colza and sunflower oil. That’s a good occasion to select the restaurants where you eat, as the oil’s choice tells a lot on the quality of the food they serve.

Tip and tricks

In case of biodiesel shortage, you can also use the slightly detaxed heating oil that you can buy in big supermarkets. No environmental gain, but that’s still useful to know.

You can also recycle your personnal kitchen oil, from the frying machine! Filter it as usual, then that’s good. That’s not big but the nature thanks you.

Filtration using gravity

Here is a picture of an easy to install filtering station. It can filter 15 liters a night. That’s not a theorical machine, but it’s used by a few cars since a few months and we had no problem right now.

The 1 is just a plastic or wood square on which we have put an old piece of tissue (a tee shirt for example). This is used as a pre-filtering stair. After filtering, the wastes you get from the tissue is biodegradable.

The 2 is a plane surface of wood with a lot of small holes to drive the oil to different filters. You can see a zoom of the picture here after.

The 3 is a set of square shaped milk bottles of which we have cut the bottom. Very important: they are fixed together very firmly to be sure to get all the oil from the upper stair. Coffee filters are fixed with plastic links or an elastic at the mouth of each bottle. The real filtering process happens here. Coffee filters make a 5 micron filtration, which is the same size of diesel filters. With these filters, you’ll get the fineness of classical diesel carburant. In case some dirt keeps in the oil, the the diesel filter of your engine will keep it.

You can also buy some filtering tissue on the web, with sizes from 1 to 5 microns, for a price around 5 to 8 euros for a square meter. In that case, you can adapt it on a wood square like on the #1 pre filtering stair. That’s the solution we advise. Moreover, these filtering tissues have a long longevity, you just have to rince it with water and use it again, while you have to change your coffee filters after each use.

The 4 is the contrary of the 2: that’s a big funnel (here made of a plastic trash bag) so that all the filtered oil gets into the jerican.

On 5, you have the final jerrican, with filtered oil inside. Enjoy!

Filtration using pression

If you have some savings or that you can share the cost with a community, there exist some german firms who sell some under pressure filtering machines with which you can get a higher rate of filtration per hour. It comes from the smallest device, pluggable on the cigar lighter, small enough to keep in the back of the car, which allows to get new carburant while driving; to the big machine which enables you to filter hundreds of liters a day. That’s impossible to make advertisement into this file, so please search yourself on the web.

Conclusion

As you can see, using Biodoesel as a carburant requires organisation and astuce, and it’s also part of the charm. Of course don’t hesitate to adapt these solutions to your needs, and if you make it better don’t hesitate to share your findings with others. From now, i can only wish you a good oil fishing!

A last astuce to finish this chapter: the underground car service station. You don’t get the idea? A self managed service station, of course! The free energy revolution is on it’s way.